This is the second volume in this musically important and highly acclaimed series of David Diamond's string quartets.

In the 1940s, David Diamond found it difficult to make ends meet but managed to produce some of his best-known works. Fortunately, he continued to receive several awards and commissions that helped sustain him. For two years (1943-45), he played violin in the weekly Carnegie Hall radio show, Your Hit Parade. It was during this time that he composed his String Quartet No. 2, as well as his Rounds for string orchestra, one of his most popular works. In the 1950s and early 1960s, Diamond lived and worked in Italy, first in Rome (1951) and then in Florence where he settled. In 1956 he returned to be with his gravely ill mother and played violin for a time in the Candide orchestra under Leonard Bernstein. In 1965, at the age of 50, he returned to the United States on a permanent basis. The program booklet for this CD contains interviews with Mr. Diamond where he tells about the composition of each one of these individual quartets which is very informative in a most imaginative way. (TROY504 is volume 1.)